


Birds

by MermaidMayonnaise



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Apocafic, Apocalypse, M/M, McShep Big Bang 2020, Road Trips, in a sci-fi context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidMayonnaise/pseuds/MermaidMayonnaise
Summary: The full title isBirds Fly in Different Directions (I Come Home).-John and Rodney are stranded on Earth when the apocalypse hits, and embark on a trip in the woods from an unidentified rural area to Cheyenne Mountain. Don’t be fooled: this is not a survival, man vs. nature fic. There’s a lot of philosophical discussions, lighting of (camp)fires, and John eats two Oreos with varying degrees of success.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 22
Kudos: 61
Collections: McShep Big Bang 2020





	Birds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eos_x](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eos_x/gifts).



> A year ago, this started as an apocalypse AU. In a way, it is. In another, it isn’t.
> 
> An incredibly big thank you to mific for being an awesome partner throughout this. She ALSO beta’d this as well as drawing three (3!) illustrations. 
> 
> I always complain to katydid_what that my fics have no plot, and she disagrees. Thanks to Katie for beta as well, because I make her read everything I write and she never complains. 
> 
> Eos1969 also betaed this fic. This story is for you. You know why.
> 
> There are two songs that go along with this: [Birds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-dxgZt4rY) by Imagine Dragons and [I Come Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5sxMyNDeyM), the obligatory Catherine Feeny song.
> 
> You three are invaluable. Thanks again. Happy reading, everyone! 7.28.20  
> 

There’s not much of anything to do, anymore.

It starts approximately twenty minutes after John and Rodney return to Earth. Unlike a lot of things, such as the state of Atlantis or the awakening of the Wraith, this was _not_ John’s fault. No matter how much Rodney informs him that bad things happen only when John is involved. Which hurts, even though it’s true. Things do tend to go wonky when John is involved. But not this. Try as he might, he literally could not have caused the world to be in the state that it is right now.

“Jesus Christ,” Rodney says, mouth slack.

The television blares incessantly, and when John turns to study it closer, Rodney waves a hand from where he’s hidden behind a stack of scientific journals and shouts at him to turn it off. Rodney says it’s not like they could do anything right now to help, unless he and John suddenly 1. pull another PhD out of their asses or 2. take complete control of the government.

“Your country is so goddamn stupid,” Rodney moans. John has to agree.

John is slightly more interested in idly solving his Sudoku than reading the news headlines crawling across the screen. Things will probably get better, he thinks. There are twelve different crises going on at all times—just ask the SGC. The authorities and the police and the government can handle this one.

Thinking that was his first mistake, and by then it was too late.

-

The state of the world two days later… it’s not good. In fact, it could be called bad, terrible, or apocalyptic. The situation was inevitable, but the damage control was absolutely horrendous. John supposes that’s one of the benefits of controlling and running their own form of government on Atlantis—for the most part, there are no morons to make the stupid decisions. But Earth is a lot bigger than Atlantis, which by the Law of Definite Proportions automatically means more idiots. 

Of course, the percentage of idiots in Atlantis is roughly one (Kavanagh) divided by the rest of the population, so probably around 0.5%. John’s less of a math whiz than Rodney, but he knows that much.

He and Rodney watch the events unfold on the television in real time. Rodney’s reactions are varied to the extreme. He sighs, he growls, he throws his hands up in the air and stalks around the room. 

“Those idiots!” Rodney says, pulling at what little remains of his hair. “Those incompetent morons—I thought _my_ scientists were bad, but this is a new level of incompetence, nay, of stupidity. This situation was completely avoidable! I cannot _believe—”_

“Be nice, Rodney,” John says. “They’re not just idiots, they’re _fucking_ idiots. There’s a difference.”

“We’re all gonna _die,”_ Rodney moans. “I’m never going to get my Nobel prize because soon there will be no committee to give it to me. Everyone will be dead. All my work will be in vain. No one will be around to recognize my genius. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me!”

“I’m with you, buddy,” John says. He privately assesses their supplies. They have enough canned food to last a while, as well as dried fruits and meats and preserves. He has his P90—which is kind of illegal, but he feels naked without it. Besides, he’s not _actually_ going to shoot anyone. If he fantasizes about going on a murder spree in the government officials’ buildings, then that’s private. Murder is bad, even when jackasses are destroying the world.

“What are you thinking about?” Rodney fixes him with a laser gaze.

“Pancakes.”

Rodney loses it at that. He runs around the house screaming and waving his arms. John thinks this is a way to blow off some energy, so he lets him. Besides, the floorboards can take it. “We’re going to die! The world is going down in flames and my sole companion is fixated on breakfast foods!”

“Mmm, maple syrup,” John says wistfully. They probably won’t be able to get any. People had rushed the convenience and grocery stores first. Strangely, the toilet paper had gone first. John and Rodney have enough to last them the few days that they hopefully have left to spend in the house, but John would rather concern himself with the Wraith or hostile natives than with having to kill himself if he had to wipe his ass with moss.

-

A national emergency is declared and a quarantine is enacted. John is stuck between fearing for the state of the world and complete boredom. It’s an interesting dichotomy. Rodney keeps himself occupied with the Internet. He claims he’s doing research vital to the growth of the scientific community, but John saw him looking at memes when he thought John wasn’t watching.

Rodney’s bored too, which is understandable. This house was supposed to be a halfway point between the SGC and their destination, somewhere. John doesn’t really know. He was tired and let Rodney handle the details. He knows they're not _too_ far from the SGC, but still a considerable distance. He knows roughly where they are but not what suburb this is, and at this point he’s too afraid to ask. Rodney would laugh his head off, then mock and/or kill John for having no sense of direction. John would rather not be chewed out/mauled by Rodney today, so he keeps his mouth shut. 

Besides, having no clue where they are is part of the charm. They’re somewhere in the quiet suburbs. He sees women in their thirties jogging outside despite the quarantine, and every single passerby is walking a small white dog. John likes his dogs big and shaggy, but whatever. A canine is a canine. Rodney’s more of a bird person. He likes bird watching, which is crazy because that requires more patience and sitting still than John would have ever imagined Rodney to have. On a particularly boring day, John digs through Rodney’s personal effects to see if he packed a little bird book. He doesn’t find one, but he wouldn’t be surprised if that crazy motherfucker has all the birds in the US memorized.

He certainly knows the call of the mourning dove, because yesterday morning when the birds were twittering, Rodney, who was in his bedroom, flung something that shattered against the wall and hollered, “I’m trying to sleep! I know it’s poetic that doves are mourning the shitty state of the world, but just let me suffer in peace!”

John sighs.

-

By the fifth day, John is getting a little stir-crazy.

“I am so _bored,”_ he groans.

“You know people are dying, right?” Rodney says around a pen in his mouth.

“Yeah, and I’d like to go do something useful, maybe _help,_ but instead we’re stuck in this stupid three room house.”

“Cry me a river.” Rodney writes something down on his stack of papers, then furiously crosses everything out.

“Can’t I go outside?” John asks. He’s lying upside down on the overstuffed couch, and his hair sticks straight up—rather, down—even more than usual. 

“No, John,” Rodney says under the Leaning Tower of Laptops, pretending to work. “You’re my bodyguard, remember?”

“I wouldn’t have volunteered,” John grumbles, reaching over to stuff a Cheeto in his mouth and crunch loudly, “if you hadn’t promised me first pick for two weeks during movie night.”

“At least you won’t have to suffer through Ronon’s choice of _Jaws_ again,” Rodney says absentmindedly, typing furiously.

John shifts in his direction and chews with his mouth open. It’s the small victories.

Rodney’s just about to tell him off for disturbing the peace when the television flashes behind John; he must have accidentally pressed some buttons on the remote buried in the cushions, because now there’s just silence. John turns toward Rodney, surprised by the lack of a rapid and scathing rebuke, and sees Rodney looking, just looking. His eyes move back and forth faster and faster, and John realizes that he’s reading.

The television reflects the warm colors of the spectrum back at John, but somehow the glow isn’t comforting. 

John stands up without realizing it, snack wrapper falling to the ground beside him. He takes a deep breath, turns around.

Rodney’s mouth hangs open, a crooked slash; he stands up and pads over silently. Laptops tumble onto the tiled floor as Rodney unroots from his spot, and they both stare at the television, uncomprehending.

The world has had better days all in all, John concludes. Earth has looked better without being wreathed in a crown of flames.

A distant explosion shakes the entire house, and the ceramic bowls drop from the shelves and shatter. The microwave beeps twice; once flashing its green 00:00 and the second a high droning _beep_ as it and all the other electronics in the house power down. The neighborhood drops into darkness as the electricity goes out all at once, and John wonders if they’ll ever hear the startup cacophony of everyone's devices rebooting. 

Oh boy. Everything can get worse. Earlier they were bored, but suddenly that doesn’t seem like the biggest issue right now.

“Go check—” Rodney starts, and John nods.

After some investigation, they discover the phone lines don’t work; all they get on the landline or their mobiles is the dial tone, droning tonelessly in their ears. 

Rodney tries their phones repeatedly and their radios on the secure SGC channel and, when that doesn’t work, rigs a homemade radio and yells desperately into the receiver. John doesn’t bother to tell him that if the SGC doesn’t have working comms, no one does.

He picks up their local landline anyway because he can’t just stand there. The incessant buzzing reminds John of the bees in his mother’s garden, before she couldn’t take care of it anymore. The flowers were red and purple, petals soft and warm from the afternoon sun. John saw a hummingbird drinking from the columbines once. He walked over as quietly as he could, looked at the bird’s effortless flight as it hovered and sipped, turning its head in quick, sharp motions. When the housekeeper called him in for dinner, it startled and darted away. John was sad to see it go.

John stays still and quiet now, watching as Rodney yells into the dead phones and silent radios scattered around him, waving his hands, red-faced and white-knuckled. After all, he doesn’t want to scare Rodney away.

-

“Okay,” Rodney says, pacing in the darkness of the house. “Okay. We can handle this. We have no car because the SGC dropped us off here. We can try Uber or some kind of other transportation, but something tells me that’s not going to work.”

“What's the goal?”

Rodney stares at him incredulously. “This world is obviously fucked. We’re going back to the SGC and then to Atlantis.”

Rodney sounds callous, but John understands. Two men can’t do anything to remedy the current situation. Genius Rodney may be, he’s not capable of resetting time. A quarter of Earth’s population could be dead and they wouldn’t even know, because they have no communication whatsoever. No, the best form of action is to get to the SGC, stat. Maybe they’d be able to help there, and if not, they can go to Atlantis and try to figure out a solution, given the resources there. Rodney reaches this conclusion much quicker than John does, so he ends up sounding cruel. Which, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t really matter. They’ve both seen each other at their worst.

The phones and radios still don’t work. This is concerning, given that the SGC has contingency plans on top of contingency plans for situations such as this, which makes John fear the worst. They might have to force their way into the SGC which would be problematic, but John knows multiple back doors. Rodney probably knows how to boot up the Stargate as well. If there are two people who’d be able to do that, it would be Rodney and Sam Carter. They’ll be fine. They have to be.

The first step is making the journey to the SGC. Rodney says the journey would take them a day or two by car, and several weeks by foot. This is not great. They don’t have a car, having been dropped off by a discrete chauffeur from the SGC a few days prior. They’re in a rural area, but fortunately there’s a gas station a few miles away. Luck of the draw, he guesses. Maybe it’s a contingency plan of the SGC, but he doesn’t think so. They plan ahead, but not for something like this.

John starts to think of practical things, like shaving without shaving cream and raiding supermarkets. He catalogues what they have in their house. There’s not much. There’s some food in the fridge, but Rodney being Rodney and John being John, it’s composed of three half-eaten cheese sandwiches, an unopened bottle of Coke, and a rotting lettuce leaf. A quick reconnoiter of the pantry indicates three boxes of granola bars, twelve cans of various preserved foods, and a jumbo pack of bottled water. That’s… not terrible. The water's usable.

Transportation will be a problem. There's no way to contact the SGC and the neighbors wouldn’t appreciate two grown men stealing their cars with the flimsy promise of government compensation. They could buy a car—Rodney certainly has the spare funds, but there’s not likely to be a car dealership in the middle of nowhere for what they need—an SUV or similar. Maybe they could get a ride to somewhere they could buy a vehicle, but that's unlikely since they're strangers and the neighbors are probably too busy cowering in their basements.

First things first, though: get some food, and hopefully some first aid kits. 

Rodney agrees, wide-eyed, and they walk the few miles to the nearest store. Or, at least, they try. They hear the screaming long before the store comes into view and smell the distinctive stink of scorched skin. John puts Rodney, who's completely freaked out now, behind him, and readies his gun. 

"Guess we won't be borrowing a car from the neighbors," John says grimly. "On the bright side, it doesn't sound like they're gonna care if we bring it back."

“This isn’t the time for levity, Sheppard,” Rodney says, looking green.

John tries not to snap at him, because it’s not like he isn’t suppressing his own nausea as well. As they walk closer to where the convenience store should be, next to the gas station, there is more and more destruction. The road is paved now instead of gravel, and they pass a few more houses, which are on fire. Their windows are broken and glass crunches underfoot. The fire is more embers than flames, which John tries to find reassuring. The people who did the destruction are probably long gone now, and it’s not like John could’ve done anything. He only has his P90, and he doesn't want to start shooting people.

They can't pass by without checking the houses. The first house yields no residents, which is reassuring only because what they can see has been ransacked, although it’s difficult to tell since the house is partially collapsed due to the fire. They check for bodies and find none.

The second house is relatively untouched by fire. John kicks down the front door anyway, because there are gouges along the siding. He and Rodney enter the foyer and stop. Rodney takes one look at the bodies and gore on the floor and runs outside to vomit, and John steadies himself against the wall. When he feels like he isn’t going to keel over, he joins Rodney outside.

“Could Earth have been found?” John asks hoarsely, because even though he saw the news and thought it couldn’t get worse... “Wraith killing humans?” If there’s one thing he learned in the Pegasus galaxy, it’s to never say never. 

He doesn’t know if he has enough bullets in his P90. He takes out the clip and checks it, pops it back in, then does it again and again and again just to be sure.

“There are no feeding marks. This is humans killing humans,” Rodney says angrily, and what can John say to that?

-

They make it to the store. It’s good that they didn’t have a car that needed gas, because there’s been an explosion and half of the lot is wiped out. Nothing is burning anymore, and the quiet presses into their ears. 

“It's too dangerous,” Rodney whispers. “What if another one of the gas lines blows?”

“We've got to get supplies. We'll just have to be quick,” John tells him. 

“It’ll be fine,” Rodney reassures himself. “The explosion’s already happened as far as we can tell. There’s no logical reason why it should explode again. The flames are already out, so we have nothing to worry about, right? Even though gas fires are incredibly dangerous, and we’re probably inhaling all kinds of noxious fumes left behind, and—”

“You’re inhaling more of the fumes just by talking, buddy.”

Rodney frowns at him.

They walk around the aftermath of the explosion. The outside of the store is intact, for the most part. The inside, not so much. It’s been raided, albeit sloppily. There are groceries scattered on the tiled floor, but John hopes the storage in the back will be relatively untouched.

The fridges along the side are shattered, with more glass on the floor. John’s grateful for his thick boots, but he thinks bleakly about how much glass there is in the world to shatter. Glass and refrigeration are luxuries people take for granted until they're taken away. John sees melted ice cream overturned and dripping out of its container, highlighted by the flickering fluorescent lights above, and it’s just… sad. 

There’s something about the mundane that just evokes this incredible sadness when it’s eviscerated. The stench of gasoline burns his nostrils, but for some reason, the small sound of it dripping onto the floor hits him hard.

“I found some packaged food,” Rodney says from the other side of the store, having found the storage room.

“Right.” Because that is what they’re supposed to be doing, gathering food for their contingency plan, not staring at chocolate swirl spattered across the floor. He joins Rodney and they start stuffing Rodney’s bag with as much food as they can, though John puts his foot down at a bag of Takis. They use John’s bag for basic necessities like soap, toothpaste, and changes of clothes since they want to be able to stay near each other without gagging. Realistically, they don’t need the bug spray and sunscreen, but it’s a preemptive strike against Rodney.

In a bizarre way, John realizes they’re shopping. They’re not going to pay for anything, but more because the cashier probably ran for their life a few hours earlier and not because they’re dead behind the register--John checked to make sure.

He continues packing his bag and reflects that they're preparing to go on a hiking and camping trip, and he's currently debating the merits of Colgate versus Crest toothpaste with one Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, who keeps insisting that John is a sissy because John ‘likes a little sparkle in his smile.’ 

_What has my life come to,_ John thinks.

It’s surreal, as shopping isn’t usually accompanied by the stink of burning rubble from outside and glass on the floor reflecting the lights--which are also on the floor.

“I found some packs, sleeping bags, and hiking boots,” Rodney says, frowning. “Not your typical convenience store merch so I guess they must be for tourists, with the forests around here. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Look, they’re relatively untouched—” he sniffs one bag just to make sure, “and they’ve still got their price tags on.”

John shrugs. A few minutes ago, he found an unused spray can advertising _Snow White!_ and pocketed it just because. Weirder things have happened. They try on boots to find the right sizes, then he reorganizes the packs and is grateful that he can hold his own in Tetris, and slings the rolled up sleeping bags over his shoulder.

It takes them some time to finish their shopping spree. They ignore the two houses they trudge past again. Eventually, the road changes back to gravel. It rolls underneath their shoes, harder to manage with the heavy packs on their backs.

Rodney has mostly lost the green tint from before and spends the walk John his exact opinion on the state of his back the whole way, which is reassuring. Rodney's like a canary in a coal mine—if he’s chattering, everything’s probably okay.

-

Back at the house, they wait beside their hissing radios for the SGC or anyone at all to contact them, give them news that the Daedalus has arrived, ready to take them back to Atlantis. Neither of them says it, but they want their trip to collect the supplies to have been unnecessary. 

They wait for two hours. John watches as Rodney’s hands fiddle with one of the radios, assembling and reassembling, needing something, anything to occupy him. Rodney reminds John of himself with a gun. John wants to tell Rodney to do something productive, but that’s just it. The problem is that there’s not much of anything to do anymore.

They could stay on Earth and help out. But from what John’s seen on the television and the street, if the chaos is this severe in a rural area, then it’s probably much, much worse in the cities. John only has so many bullets in his gun, but that’s beside the point. Procedure dictates that if a situation like this happens, those off-base need to return, stat. John’s not much for procedures, but he’s also aware that they don’t know the full situation. They could end up doing more harm than good. No, the best course of action is to return to the SGC—to Atlantis, if need be. At the SGC, they’ll have intel and transportation and help more effectively.

Neither of them says it, but they’re both aware that there’s a distinct possibility that by the time they make it to the SGC, there might be nothing they can do. There might be no one to help simply because there’s no one left.

“We have to go back,” John says quietly after two hours, when the possibility of their journey has just become a reality. Rodney meets his eyes, slow and steady, and nods.

They’re on their way.

After that, it’s almost easier. They hurry around the house and collect the various miscellanea that have accumulated during their brief stay that transformed the house into a technology-ridden nest. When Rodney holds up the radio that’s tuned to the SGC channel, John says, “Yes, of course,” because the day that he stops believing in the ineffable possibility of Atlantis is the day they all lose.

-

Rodney leaves his Leaning Tower of Laptops behind, broken as they are on the floor, and John knows it's painful for him to do so without even seeing Rodney’s fingertips gently caress the dead black screens as they abandon them in favor of food and medical supplies.

Rodney finds a small diary (“A _journal,_ John!”) and two red ballpoint pens, pocketing them despite John’s reproving look (“It’s not like you’re actually going to be doing any writing!”). They have enough to carry as it is.

“It’s going to be one hell of a debriefing,” Rodney says, testing the pens against the pad of his thumb. “Might as well get started now.”

It’s such a Rodney thing to say, so John doesn’t voice the thought that getting back to Atlantis isn’t a certainty. He takes a pen, intending to draw something crude on his arm to make Rodney laugh and protest and snatch it back, but the thin translucent plastic snaps under his white-knuckled fingers. The ink drips down his wrist. It looks like blood.

It doesn’t take them long to leave after that.

-

This whole situation is fucked. It was supposed to be a routine trip back to Earth, for fuck’s sake. He and Rodney were given a separate _house,_ and it was stocked with things like _alcohol_ and _desserts—_ Atlantis, while not totally devoid of such luxuries, isn’t a land of milk and honey with plenty to go around for all. There's still a reason that among the old timers, the monetary system is entirely modeled on various candy bars. Of course, their value was greatly decreased with the arrival of the Daedalus, but they kept it up more for posterity than anything else. Plus, the taste of a two year old Milky Way bar has no earthly counterpart.

It isn’t John’s fault that the entire world collectively decided to go to shit. He planned on driving to the grocery store and loading up on Kit-Kats and maybe Skittles, just to wave them under Woolsey’s nose. Woolsey, even though he wasn’t there at the beginning, grew on you like an old, crotchety mold. Woolsey would probably huff under his breath and look away, but then he’d definitely team up with Ronon and get him to ambush John in an abandoned corridor or something.

But seriously, it’s either escape back to Atlantis and leave humanity to die, or stay on Earth to help humanity and die along with them. John watched the news enough before the television died to see that the devastated landscape of Earth wasn't only limited to populated areas: some rural areas and forests were struck as well. But that doesn’t change the fact that Mumbai and Paris are flattened into the ground and New York City and Beijing are smoking craters.

That alone lowers the population by at least two billion or something. John’s okay with numbers but shit with statistics, especially the population kind—he leaves that to the sociologists and the anthropologists and the social scientists that Rodney insists have nothing better to do with their time. John’s not so sure about that. They look busy sometimes, like that time when their team stumbled upon a bunch of caves with scratches that looked like chickens ran lengthwise along the walls. Teyla insisted that they were the markings of the long-forgotten tribe of _something_ and then made a bunch of guttered, garbled noises that must’ve been the name, but then the glowing bear-things attacked and they got the hell outta dodge. 

That adventure seemed scary at the time, but they made it out. In hindsight, it sounds possibly something they can laugh about, except the rest of his team is in Atlantis while Rodney practices making pouty faces in the screen of his dead phone.

Rodney’s alright—he’s not as bad as he was at the beginning, that’s for sure, he went from incel to someone John could consider a best friend—but John wishes for his full team. Then he and Rodney didn’t have to go through the motions of should they stay or should they go by the Clash, instead letting Teyla and Ronon debate the ethics of tough moral decisions. John and Rodney are both objectively pretty bad people: because for John, and most definitely Rodney, any hesitation on making the decision on their part is a farce. John’ll regret it for the rest of his life, but he doesn’t hesitate once he makes up his mind. The choice is obvious.

-

It’s a long trip to Cheyenne Mountain, long enough that they stare at the number of miles they have to go on the pad of paper Rodney scribbled it on. They shoulder their packs and get (not steal, money doesn’t have value anymore) hiking boots from a sports store whose windows are smashed and alarms silent.

Abandoned cars are scattered on the roads. Rodney tries hot-wiring some of them but the engines sputter and die.

“What the hell,” he mutters. He tries again and again, but none work. He turns to John. “Am I losing my mind?”

John, who has no knowledge of cars but is competent with all sorts of planes, shrugs. He then tries the only thing he can think of, the tried and true method—he kicks the engine as hard as he can. It roars to life.

Rodney smacks his forehead with a hand, leaving a grease stain. “Goddamn it—you know what, just for that, you’re driving. I don’t even know. Motherfucking—”

They load their gear in the car and start driving. They make some progress, but the roads are clogged. The concrete is torn up in some places, and power lines are downed, snapping and sparking. After a few hours of driving, they reach a thickly wooded forest and the road veers off around it in the wrong direction, away from where they're headed. 

Fearing the worst, John checks the map. The forest extends for miles and miles across their path. The main problem's their lack of gasoline. In theory, they could make a big detour until they cleared the forest, but it'd use up their remaining gas. It would severely strain their limited resources of food and water. Ultimately, the probability of finding another car was extremely low, and they’d just be deviating from the straight path from them to the SGC. They're completely isolated out here with the fear of having no more cars to hotwire. There’s no guarantee that they’d find more.

“I hate my life,” John says. 

They get out their packs and tie their shoes. They enter the forest, Rodney cursing the whole way. This begins the first day of their journey in the wilderness.

-

“What?” John protests. “Superman is _leagues_ better than Batman!”

The sheer incredulity that crosses Rodney’s face was priceless. “What are you _talking_ about?” Rodney squawks. “Batman uses his resources. Superman’s a prissy in a cape!”

They grin at each other, because this is the apocalypse and they’re arguing about superheroes. But for once, things are almost normal, and John’s going to take what he can get. They walk in the relative quiet, listening to the wind whistling through the leaves.

“I hate the West,” Rodney says after they've slogged through undergrowth for a while. “Isn’t it supposed to be desert and plains and shit? This is so unfair.”

The sun is setting. It’s early autumn, so it’s not too cold. Still, this doesn’t deter Rodney from complaining. He’s talking about his feet, his shoes, his feet aching in his shoes, his shoulders, his back, his spine. For the most part, John tunes him out. There are more important things to think about, like… well. He doesn’t want to be listening to Rodney’s kvetching. 

He kicks sticks from their path and steps on others to hear them crunch. He’s had to deal with Rodney before. Rodney is his friend, even if John is a man of stoic silence and sometimes wants to stuff a gag in Rodney’s mouth. 

It’s quiet though, a little too quiet. John’s gone camping before, so he knows it's never completely silent. The crickets have come out, and once in a while bushes rustle from small mammals like squirrels and rabbits. There’s something missing. 

“Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Rodney asks.

They're in a clearing with more of a view, and John looks up at the sky. Over the sun, hovering over the horizon, towering cumulus clouds drift above them, cold and uncaring.

“The birds,” John says. “They’re gone.”

It's like the last straw. John likes birds, and this is unfair. The birds seem symbolic of the state of the world, even though John knows there must be some reason for it. But he doesn't have enough brain cells to figure it out.. He's a bird with ruffled feathers, physically and metaphorically, Rodney's a bird that squawks a lot and wakes everyone up for no reason. Dinosaurs were birds because the Tyrannosaurus Rex was an ancestor of the chicken or something and the entire Earth's a dead duck, because why not?

John likes birds not just because they can fly—although that's definitely part of it—but because the way they cock their heads at everything makes them seem infinitely curious, and John wishes he could go back to a time when he was birdlike—young and light and full of energy, instead of being a sack of heavy bones, fingers twitching for the throttle and blood aching for the rush of multiple Gs because that’s the only way he feels alive.

Now that the worst has happened, it’s something of a relief. This is it. They’re almost definitely screwed. Now he can allow himself to be angry and snap at Rodney and kick rocks on the path and rip the leaves off the trees.

He doesn’t, but he seethes inside because he's so angry all the time. Even now that he finally has a reason, it doesn’t feel right, and he doesn’t know why he was angry in the first place. He's possibly even more confused than when he started. He lays off on Rodney because Rodney has bags under his eyes despite the fact that they just started their journey _,_ but Rodney's always stressed for some reason, just like John’s always angry, so John figures it’s just Rodney’s way of coping and leaves him alone.

-

Rodney chatters constantly as they make dinner over a small fire—it's safe to light a fire to cook, because who else is there to see it out here? Rodney's shamelessly garrulous, with anecdotes and complaints and scientific explanations that fly (fluttering, feathers scattering in the wind like the absent birds) right over John’s head.

It’s a replacement for the near constant, usually imperceptible hum of electricity. John finds it difficult to concentrate without it, and the thought of the little ways humanity has become accustomed to and dependent on technology scares him.

Rodney, bless him, notices John’s increasingly white-lipped silence, and doesn’t hassle him about not responding. Rodney’s rambling helps maintain a semblance of normality. John’s grateful that Rodney talks to fill the quiet because if Rodney’s still talking, everything’s okay. However, Rodney’s talking tapers off as they set up the sleeping bags and lie down, and John is left with the silence and the faint buzzing inside his head.

-

One day as they make their way across the Rocky Mountains, Rodney decides to pontificate on the importance of solar and wind power instead of watching the terrain he’s walking on. John’s about to warn him, caught mid-smile at his ridiculousness, when a cougar appears out of fucking nowhere and jumps them.

Rodney yells in fear and John spends precious moments fumbling for his gun and flipping the safety off, but by that time the cougar's on Rodney, claws extended. John finally fires the gun and they both wince at the loud bang and the cougar (scrawny, it wouldn’t attack them if it wasn’t starving) yelps and runs off, limping.

He hurries to Rodney to survey the damage, ignoring Rodney’s groans. “Where did it get you? Where—” 

Rodney points to his leg and Christ, there are four deep slashes in the fabric and blood everywhere. John lays Rodney down on the ground and cuts his pants right off him (“Don’t you have to buy me dinner first?” Rodney moans, biting clear through his bottom lip in pain), cleaning the lacerations as best he can, applying antibiotic ointment that was, of course, all the way at the bottom of his backpack; he fumbles it twice, ignoring the way Rodney continues to lose color. 

He rummages some more in the pack, looking for bandages and finding them after several breathless moments, ripping open the plastic wrapping with his teeth and unrolling the clean white cloth, winding it around Rodney’s leg, and ignoring the red that stains the fabric. He helps Rodney into a spare pair of pants.

John leaves the safety off his gun after that. Before, Rodney made jokes about him being trigger-happy, but now he just eyes the gun, glances away quickly, and chatters about something else.

-

They’re resting, leaning against one of the sparse trees of the mountains. They have to take breaks more often. Rodney’s leg needs medical attention, not the basic field training John has, and it’s a terrible thing, being helpless. They both know that if Rodney comes down with an infection, that’s it: game over. Rodney wears the pain well, using crutches John cut for him out of branches and only complaining once in a while.

The scenery around them is beautiful, although their progress is slow. The mountains overlook small lakes, which shine unpolluted. They’re not completely up the mountain, rather walking where the trees thin out and rocky slopes begin.

Autumn’s in full swing, and the thick woods below them blaze with color. At this distance, the leaves are indistinguishable from each other, but individual trees are visible, forming a carpet across the ground. The trees cover both sides of the river nearest to them, and the water reflects the sun, low in the sky. The lakes reflect the pinks and reds and oranges, occasionally catching the sun full on. They wink and glitter like they're filled with topazes and rubies. 

In a way, it’s cruel. Rodney is hobbling and biting back curses beside him, while John enjoys the sunset. But it’s a relief that beauty can still coexist with horror and devastation. It makes John feel small and insignificant. The river yawns wide in the impending night, the trees cover the ground like a blanket, and the mountains loom over them all.

The effect is compounded by the silence. There aren’t any other humans here, though not because of the apocalypse or whatever the hell is happening to the world. Humans are tourists here, not inhabitants. 

For the first time, John sees nocturnal animals starting to crawl out from their burrows to scamper across their path. He hears the hoots of the native owls—he can’t recognize any of them, but it’s comforting to hear the nighttime sound of the remaining birds. It’s reassuring because even after they—Rodney and John, the denizens of Colorado, civilization as a whole—are gone, the wilderness will take their place.

It makes abandoning Earth a little less painful. Even if humanity ceases to exist because of aliens or technology or stupid self-destruction, short of a nuclear winter, life will persevere. And who knows, humans are tough. Maybe a few will survive and rebuild civilization, and the Atlantians can keep in contact through the Stargate. It'd be ironic, with Atlantis helping re-establish Earth for once. They’ve done it with plenty of planets in Pegasus, but never with their homeland.

The rocks crunch beneath John’s boots, and he stumbles. He looks over to Rodney, who’s hobbling with a sour expression but at a decent pace. Rodney notices him looking and makes a face. Their shadows stretch long on the ground to their left. They make a strange pair: John laden with both his pack and Rodney’s, Rodney looking like some strange creature with his bent-over posture and makeshift crutches.

The sun has completely set now, and the wind whistles around them. John wants him along, but Rodney claims that John’s tone deaf, so he refrains. It’s nicer to listen to the music of the night, kept in time with John’s even tread and Rodney’s syncopated _step, crutch, step._ John didn’t grow up in the city, so he’s used to the relative quiet, but not like this. This is different, because it’s not silent, but infused with a peacefulness that has John’s shoulders relaxing and Rodney visibly untensing.

John doesn’t want to break the not-silence of nature, but Rodney’s breathing heavily and it’s dangerous to hike in the mountains at night. He says, “Let’s make camp,” and mourns the shattering of the quiet when they start unpacking and the rustling overcomes the hoots of the owls. After a quick and dry meal—neither of them have the energy to make a fire tonight—they maneuver into their sleeping bags and let the melody of the wild sing them to sleep.

-

A few days later, Rodney’s injury is still the same. It affects him in virtually every way, and to be honest, he’s slowing them down to a pace that’s unmanageable with their supplies. John feels guilty about this, because it’s not like Rodney _asked_ to be injured, so he carries Rodney’s bags without complaint. 

When he gets angry and tired enough to want to snap at Rodney for _not getting better already,_ he takes one look at the dark smudges under Rodney’s eyes and realizes all over again that Rodney is being a trooper and doing his very best. 

“I’m sorry,” John tries to say as Rodney limps severely and trips over every single small rock in the path—if there’s a twig in a twenty meter radius, it’s guaranteed Rodney’s good foot will find it—but Rodney stops him, looking tired. 

“It’s okay, John—”

“No, it’s not,” John says, angry. “I was caught off-guard—I should’ve been more careful, there’s a literal apocalypse going on. I was stupid, and neglectful, and—” 

Rodney interrupts him, weary, and says, “No one could have known. You couldn’t have known, and besides—” 

John’s frustrated, because Rodney won’t let him talk and goddamn it he has something to say. He turns towards Rodney and takes his face in two hands, then hurriedly grips Rodney’s shoulders instead, because he might be losing his mind, but he doesn’t want Rodney to fall. Rodney’s eyes are wide but unreadable; surprisingly he lets John manhandle him without complaint, without reaction. 

This isn’t the time, but John is full of this bittersweet feeling of knowing Rodney is hurt but he’s still trying his best despite his injury and the end of the fucking world. It’s admirable, his stubbornness in adversity. His lack of complaint testifies to the character that John watched grow to fruition in Atlantis.

From what John's heard, Rodney used to treat women like sexual objects, and thought his lack of a sex life came from being ‘ugly’ when it was really his blatant sexism and terrible attitude. 

The main reason he put Rodney on his team was Rodney’s absolute intelligence and knowledge of just about everything under the sun (throughout galaxies), and a tiny niggling feeling that lodged in John’s chest and wouldn’t go away when John sat in the control chain and Rodney bent over him and said, “Major, think about where we are in the solar system.”

John’s hunches usually came to zilch—just look at his career before Atlantis—but this one ultimately proved correct. Maybe Rodney needed a fresh start after messing things up at the SGC: to be appreciated by his team and the expedition for saving their asses, even if he did still yell a lot. It could’ve been Teyla with her sticks and Ronon with his silences and sense of humor—maybe this was John projecting, but the truth was that Rodney had changed. He had gone from an annoying womanizer to someone worthy of respect and respected in return, and somewhere along the way, he'd become John's friend.

It’d taken a while, years probably, but that niggling feeling had never gone away in John’s chest. He was so emotionally constipated he kept thinking that maybe those sort-of-pancakes he ate in the mess weren’t quite sitting well, but he eventually connected that slight flip-flopping in his chest to the sight of Rodney shooting a gun _with accuracy,_ and went from _Why the hell did I put him on my team_ to _What are we to each other?_

Why John had to have a stupid gay crisis in his very late thirties instead of going through it in his teen years, he had no clue. But he saw Teyla holding hands with Jennifer Keller and Ronon checking out Evan Lorne’s ass, and alright, _maybe_ he was queer, but he definitely wasn’t the weirdest one on the team, because _Lorne,_ really?

When the feeling in his chest rises up again, he squeezes Rodney’s shoulders and thinks, _Here we are, alive and kicking._ He kisses Rodney, and even more surprisingly, Rodney lets him.

It unfolds slow and sweet between them, like the feeling of Atlantis coming alive under his fingertips for the first time, and John’s awash in colors and sounds from another lifetime. If he strains his ears, he can hear waves breaking in the distance and taste the salt in the air.

He feels bitter seawater drip down his cheeks, and when he pulls back and opens his eyes he sees Rodney’s blank expression as splintered into pieces. His eyes are red and he's crying too.

“I want to go _home,”_ Rodney says thickly, choking on the loss of it. 

John presses their foreheads together, tastes Rodney when he licks his own lips, and says, “Me too, Rodney, me too.”

-

Their supply of canned and dried goods runs out, and even though they knew it was inevitable, it still feels like a punch to the gut. John begins to hate the taste of power bars, but luckily between his and Rodney’s knowledge of natural flora, they’re able to find some roots and berries to supplement their diet. 

“Hunters and gatherers once again,” Rodney grumbles, picking leaves out of his hair. “Yet you keep the spray paint.”

John gives Rodney some of his share of food, not paint, ignoring the rumbling in his stomach, and Rodney accepts them gracefully, so it’s okay.

Things are… things are both strange between them, and also the same. John isn’t a lovesick teenage romantic, so he doesn’t feel upset that he and Rodney haven’t kissed again. They have other things to worry about, like the way Rodney’s leg is getting weaker and John’s sinking into the ground from the weight of their combined packs.

John longs for the taste of Oreos rather than Rodney's lips, frankly. They’re bundled up in their sleeping bag, having unzipped the two and connected them without further comment. It’s the only change in their relationship, besides, the nights are significantly colder in autumn. John heaves a big sigh and thinks about whether the cream or cookie is better and debates involving Rodney in an argument over what order of eating Oreos is correct, when he hears Rodney mutter, “Nilla wafers,” and “Airplane food,” under his breath and while there’s no accounting for taste, at least he’s not alone in this.

-

They’re walking through the densely wooded forests now instead of skirting them. Somehow, impossibly, they’ve almost made it through Colorado. John walks ahead of Rodney and does his best to clear a path for the both of them, and despite the slight chill, he’s sweating profusely. Rodney, ever talkative, has just informed him Colorado was the Centennial State and John heaves a deep sigh in response, when there’s a break in the trees. Rodney cuts off his recitation of the fifty states (“I bet most if not all Americans can’t do _that!”_ ) and they sit down. 

Rodney stretches his leg and changes his bandage, (John worriedly notes the dwindling supply), and switches the subject of his rambling to the essentials of federal grants. He asks John his opinion on their contribution to the scientific community, and John’s just about to say that he doesn’t _care,_ when a goose flies overhead. John’s on his feet and the P90 is in his hand before he can think, and there’s one gunshot echoing in his ears along with the sound of the bird thumping to the dirt.

They stow the dead bird in a sack and put it on Rodney’s back because John can’t carry more. A few hours later, they find a break in the trees and make camp for the night. Rodney takes the sack off his back with difficulty and drops it on the ground. John goes over to it, takes out his knife and cleans it, rolls up his sleeves, and starts preparing it.

Rodney looks away from the feathers flying everywhere and continues to build a fire by collecting branches of varying size, just like John taught him, arranging them into a teepee shape. Rodney takes out their last battery and steel wool. The battery method is faster and more effective than flint and steel. There’s no reason to conserve their batteries anymore since their radios have been silent for a long time now. He sets the kindling alight, not watching as John grips the knife and cuts into the bird to remove the offal. He's seen Ronon do it a few times, and it's rough, but it'll do.

(If John were a poet, he would think that the loss of innocent life will sustain them—it must, or all will be in vain; but he isn’t, so he doesn’t.)

The goose is scrawny, but if John has learned anything over the past five years, it's that anything is tolerable with enough salt and pepper. John holds the goose over the fire to singe off the smaller feathers, then finds a thick stick and spears the bird on it. Rodney unsubtly holds back a gag—he never did like killing animals. John’s not a fan, but also not a wuss and more importantly, not a fan of starving.

John builds a little structure to hold the bird—two upside down Vs and the thick stick laid across them—and slowly turns the bird over the fire. Once it starts cooking, it releases a salivating smell, and liquids drip into the fire and release the smell of fat.

Rodney returns from gathering wood and sits down next to John on their shared log. They both rest for a while until the goose is done. John takes it down and unspears it carefully, and burns two fingers instead of all of them. John salts the bird while Rodney pulls it apart, because this is the time he’s picked to suddenly become macho, and tucks into it with a lack of grace that serves their situation. John shoves a goose leg into his mouth whole.

That night they feast like kings, and for once John sits back after dinner and smacks his lips in satisfaction. They’ve set aside the wishbone for the end of the meal, and now they grasp each end of the bone with greasy hands, their fingers slipping.

They each make a wish: “I wish my goddamn leg would heal already,” and “I wish Cheyenne Mountain was right in front of us,” and then Rodney hastily says, “Never mind, your wish is better, I rescind mine.”

John says, “No take backs!” and he sees Rodney looking at him incredulously and suddenly they’re both overcome with giggles at their ridiculousness.

On the count of three, they snap the bone. Rodney gets the bigger half and crows about his victory for a full thirty seconds before John tosses away the title of graceful loser and snatches it away from him.

The stars are shining in the sky by the time the crackling of the fire dies down as they bundle into the sleeping bag together. They neaten up their camp and John throws dirt on the fire and stomps on it. Most of the debris was cleared when they built the fire pit and they can’t douse it with water since their supply is finite. They haven’t died in a forest fire yet, so he figures they’ll be alright. 

John stares up at the night sky and marvels at its clarity. The stars glint and glow. It’s odd how the constellations are both familiar yet jarring. John feels like he has double vision, like you get when you remember a place from childhood, and return to find everything changed and a little smaller. He sees two images in his mind, the past overlaying the present, and it’s alienating and disorienting and a bit sad.

In Atlantis, the constellations stood out like lights on the city horizon. The stars blur in John’s eyes as he blinks hard and thinks about how much he misses home. Rodney’s dead to the world beside him, facing the opposite way and snoring quietly. John stays on his back, puts his hands behind his head, and squints at the twinkling of distant stars and galaxies, until he eventually falls asleep to the chirping of the crickets. He dreams of the garden he used to play in as a kid, just as big as it used to be and bursting with color.

They wake in the morning intertwined and discover that Rodney’s leg is somehow, impossibly, a little better.

After a quick breakfast of granola and cold leftover goose, they break camp and leave, the only evidence of their passing a pile of ashes, two uneven shards of bone, and a splatter of bird's blood.

-

“What’s the greatest force in the universe?” John asks Rodney a few hours later. They’re walking through a rare clearing, accentuated by scraggly bushes and patches of yellow grass that crunch beneath their boots.

“Uh.” Rodney stops walking, but when John continues without him, he hurries to catch up. “Gravity, obviously. On the miniscule scale, it’s the strong force, then gravity for the largest bound structures. Are you asking this seriously? Because there’s so much about the universe that we still don’t know, and to be honest, the traditional view of fundamental forces could be overthrown considering I make breakthroughs every other day.”

“I meant—” John stops. “This is going to sound stupid. You’re going to mock me.”

“When don’t I?”

“Fair. I think the strongest force in the universe is love.”

Rodney bursts out laughing. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Yeah,” John says. “I know nothing about love. That's why I’m qualified to pontificate about it—because I see its effects from the outside. Gravity's only constant until you develop the technology to negate it. Love is holistic. It permeates everything and changes fundamentals through its inevitability. Life has been defined by love and vice versa, and if life is scientific, can’t love be as well?”

“As a scientist, I'm inclined to disagree,” Rodney says.

John shakes his head. “Science poo-poos emotions because they aren’t quantifiable. But aren’t some forces real and acknowledged even though you can’t measure them? Doesn’t dark matter exist even though we know virtually nothing about it? And there’s so much more that we haven’t discovered,”John says. “Be serious. Wouldn't you do anything, absolutely anything for those you love?”

Rodney looks at the ground and picks at the clumps of dirt. His eyes flicker between the pebbles in his fingers and John’s face. He says, hesitantly, “I guess.” 

The rest of the day is quiet between them. John sees the cogs turning in Rodney’s mind. They set up camp in silence, until Rodney says:

“You know that’s not true.”

“What?”

“That you don’t know anything about love.”

“I don’t. I’ve never had another person that I’ve really loved and I’ve never had kids.”

“There are other types of love,” Rodney says softly. “You have your city. Your soldiers. Your friends. Your teammates. Me.”

John grunts, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He punches Rodney’s shoulder because he’s incapable of showing affection, and squares his shoulders. 

They continue to walk. A few days later, Rodney stops using his dirty and sweat-soaked crutch. They burn it in that night’s fire, and Rodney’s expression is gleeful in the light of the flames.

-

“Isn’t it weird how obsessions fade over time?” Rodney asks out of nowhere.

John grunts. He’s more interested in navigating the terrain, but he’ll bite. “I guess,” he mutters instead of not responding at all.

“It’s weird,” Rodney continues. “I’m a man of various and incredibly numerous interests, and because I'm so talented in so many different things and I'm constantly evolving—” John represses a sigh, “—other interests rise up to take their place. It’s just the strangest thing.” Rodney jumps up and tries to pick a leaf from off a branch right above him, and fails. John stretches onto his tiptoes, grabs it, and hands it to Rodney. “I’m hyper-obsessive about my interests—”

“I’ll say,” John mutters, having been forced to listen to many of them.

“—but once they fade, that’s it. Boom! All gone.” Rodney gestures wildly, imitating an explosion. “All of that passion and interest that I sank hours and hours of time into: gone. No matter what I do, I can’t get it back. The fire takes so much time to build and set aflame, and feeding it is easy. I like hearing the wood being consumed in the same way that I like to whack the forming embers on low-burning logs. It makes the most satisfying crunch.”

John knows this. Rodney always takes pleasure in building and maintaining the fire when they set up camp.

Rodney shreds the leaf in his hands, scattering orange to the winds. “The fire is great while it lasts, y’know. It’s fun to you that you’re the one controlling it, that you’re responsible for its growth and maintenance. It’s different from a computer. AI is nifty, but it can’t hold a candle to actual life, much as I hate to admit it. Even the Ancients hadn’t progressed technology to that point, though they got so close it’s fascinating.”

Sometime during Rodney’s monologue it started raining, and fat droplets fall from the sky. They press on nonetheless, but John shakes his head at random intervals like a dog and sends water flying onto Rodney, who sputters.

“Stop that! Anyway, as I was saying… Fire gives the impression that it’s this living, organic, ever-growing thing, but it’s not. It’s a marvel of thermodynamics and combustion—marvel in terms relative to the original homo sapiens, who thought the wheel was the next big hot thing—but in reality, it’s controlled by the creator.”

“Unless, of course, it gets out of hand,” John points out.

“Of course,” Rodney agrees, blinking water out of his eyes, “or an outside force could interfere, like this rain. But for the most part, a fire is only lit long enough to be controlled without any outside interference.”

“I think you lost sight of the metaphor.”

“I’m not a pyro!” Rodney protests. “I just think fire is fascinating. Anyway, everything has to have an end. Every fire eventually has to go out. Our campsite fires usually die because we don’t provide them with more fuel. I think that my interests are like that, in that if I don’t provide them with any new or engaging material, they burn and fade out on their own.”

“Fires have embers.”

“At least for a little while!” Rodney jumps and manages to snag another leaf, this one red. “For a certain period of time, a latent interest can always be stoked. But unlike a fire, I don’t think that an old interest can ever rear its head and return to its full glory.”

“Why not?”

“Because a lot of the pathways have already been carved in the brain. A lot of the fun of something new is making connections from scratch. With all of those paths already pre-carved, rekindling an interest is less building the fire and more, well, rekindling. I guess what I’m trying to say is that while the interest can flare up to the same height it was before, it’ll have lost its novelty. A fire is never more interesting when relit. It’s the initial stage, the happiness and euphoria of setting it aflame, that's exciting and _new.”_ Rodney folds the leaf in half, then in half again. “It’s like that saying that paper can only be folded a maximum of seven times.”

“I thought it was eight.”

“I looked this up when we were still in the house. Apparently, it’s theoretically possible and that MythBusters duo debunked it by using a piece of paper as large as a football field. Did you know that folding it 103 times, the thickness would be larger than the observable universe? 93 billion light years. The problem with paper is that it’s cellulose and basically a bunch of really thin strips of wood, so its structure can’t maintain its integrity when it’s folded. That’s why it explodes under extreme pressure.”

John sighs. He misses explosions. “What does this have to do with your interests?”

“Nothing much. I just think it’s interesting. I was trying to say that stoking the embers of an old interest will never be as satisfying as the first time. The novelty has worn off.”

“If this is another way for you to apologize about harassing me over my spray can—”

“Not everything’s about you,” Rodney says. “Anyway, the mind craves variety. Going back to something you once loved and obsessed over feels good at first, like you’re wrapping yourself in a blanket that you once used to drag behind with you all the time until it got dirty and your mother threw it in the trash—”

“Stay on topic.”

“—but when you discover fifteen years later that she actually put in the washing machine and hid it in a cardboard box, and you found this box when you came back from college to pick up some things—”

“Not that this relates to any personal experience whatsoever...”

“None. But you feel this nostalgia when you see it, because you’re reminded of a time when it made you happy. You’ll rub the faded fabric through your fingers and try to rekindle some of that fondness you once had, and it feels like you’re going down into a part of yourself that’s been untouched for years and poking it. It feels like waking up a part of yourself that’s supposed to have been in permanent hibernation, a relic from another time, and feels _wrong_ to force it to wakefulness. It’s a physical representation of the past.”

“Isn’t that good? Getting in touch with your 'inner child' and all?”

“Sure, but that’s not what I mean. Clinging to an image of how things used to be is generally what holds us back from growth. There’s a reason conservatives are generally pooh-poohed by intellectuals, because the latter realize that you can’t cling to the past to be able to move forward. Remembering and learning from past experiences is essential, but trying to force the modern world into an idealized image of what once was is stupid, and moreover, impossible. We and the world are constantly changing. You can’t expect things to remain static.”

The rain pours down on them. John holds his jacket over him and Rodney, but his arms are tired.

“Speaking of things changing,” John says, “this rain has to end sometime.”

“Hopefully.” Rodney squints. “Is that a cave?”

“No.” John sighs. “Just a crack in the rocks. Nice wishful thinking, though.”

“So. What did you learn?”

“What’s this, a quiz?”

Rodney nudges his shoulder.

“Everything has an end, but you have to keep moving forward,” John sighs.

“That’s a very simplified way of putting it, but yes,” Rodney says self-importantly.

John hip-checks him. Rodney dodges, and in the process gets drenched in rain. He squeaks, and John laughs, but in his mind he holds an image of Atlantis as it was at the beginning, blue glowing lights and a feeling of _welcome home,_ and has a sinking feeling that it might greet him the same way again, but he’ll never feel as excited as he once did at the prospect of coming home.

-

Their water supply’s running dangerously low, both of them drinking from the same leathery-tasting canteen, when they stumble upon a river. Rodney can’t help the whoop that he lets out, and even as John teases him they both run towards the bank, throwing off their boots, and stumbling into the (fresh, glorious, freezing) water.

“We should probably wash ourselves,” Rodney says, sniffing the junction of his shirt where arm meets torso and hurriedly turning his head away and coughing.

“Yeah, alright,” John says, and steps onto the rocks where his shoes and socks are strewn, slings the backpack off and strips off his shirt. He’s in the middle of peeling off his pants when he notices the lack of movement from the water, and turns his head to see Rodney staring, mouth open slightly, sun glinting off water droplets scattered in his hair. 

He doesn’t know what to say, has no idea what to do in this situation. It’s one of the things they don’t talk about. Hell, he _kissed_ Rodney a million years ago, so instead he forces his tense back muscles to relax into a faux-casual stance and says, “Admiring the view?”

Rodney splutters incoherently, turning red, and John almost feels the loss of pressure on his skin as Rodney glances away.

John’s in nothing but his boxers now, and suddenly feels brave; there’s nothing out here but the trees and the warm sun on his neck and the susurrus of water. He spreads his hands, and calls out to Rodney: “Well?” Rodney only hesitates for a second before coming back to the shore and struggling out of his clothes.

They’re both only in their underwear, and the silence is becoming too much, but then Rodney suddenly cracks a smile and says, “Remember the time on P4S-517 when they made us do that ritual?” 

John takes a moment to remember, then: “Oh yeah, they made us do a _mud run.”_

Rodney laughs and says, “Naked!” and they both remember Teyla and Ronon effortlessly complying, because of the goddamn Pegasus Galaxy standards of normality, and suddenly it isn’t that embarrassing anymore, because at least this time they don’t have leaves and twigs tangled in their hair.

John fishes an unused bar of soap out of the pack and climbs onto a jutting rock that sticks out into the river, sticking his tongue out at Rodney before executing a perfect dive. He stays underwater for a bit on impulse, opening his eyes in the murkiness and seeing plants and rocks under him, listening to the muted rush of the current passing by, before kicking up to the surface, breaking the water and throwing his head back, sending a spray of water into his eyes. 

He’s still blinking moisture out of his eyes when he hears Rodney’s call of “Jackass!” from shore, and then Rodney’s gingerly walking into the middle of the river, shivering at the cold and complaining about the feeling of sharp rocks beneath the delicate soles of his feet. It’s normal, almost, and this abruptly becomes just another thing he does with Rodney, along with stealing bits of each other’s food, sleeping side by side, and spending all of their waking hours together.

They tread water, trying to scrub themselves clean as best they can. The soap slips from Rodney’s fingers once, so they both chase after it, laughing and splashing in water that isn’t so cold after all, and after catching it they deem themselves clean and swim back to shore and lie panting on the sun-warmed rock.

They don’t have any towels, so they sprawl there until the water evaporates from their skin. John turns his head, about to suggest refilling their canteens and moving on from this spot, and sees that Rodney’s sound asleep, shoulders relaxed, mouth open.

A single bird twitters overhead, and John decides not to wake him.

Rodney sleeps through most of the afternoon. When he wakes up and sees John watching the colors of the setting sun, he promptly yelps, “Why didn’t you wake me?” and John just shakes his head.

How would he be able to explain, anyway? How would he possibly be able to articulate Rodney’s peaceful face as he lay there, completely unguarded, and say that this was the first time he’d seen Rodney completely and utterly relaxed? That the lines and creases on Rodney’s face melted away, and he looked about ten years younger and more innocent, and maybe John could pretend that this was another life, one where the world wasn’t ending and they were together by the seashore, dozing comfortably.

And god, John can _see_ it; Rodney asleep as he reclines in a beach chair with some scientific journal spread open across his lap with scribbles in the margins, pen dangling loosely from his hand, forgotten. The wind blows softly, and John’s lying on a blanket in the sand next to him, small grains covering his feet and sunglasses lying next to his head. 

If John closes his eyes, he can pretend that the running of the river is the waves of the ocean, so he lets darkness overtake his vision and doesn’t respond.

It’s only for a few minutes, though. He hears Rodney rise to his feet and the telltale shuffle of clothes being put on, putting _himself_ on. John counts to ten, then opens his eyes and does the same.

-

Rodney looks up and sees John smiling at him with the biggest, goofiest smile that Rodney’s ever seen.

“What?” Rodney snaps.

John, the idiot, somehow smiles even wider. “Nothing. Just, you’re—” and gestures expansively, which conveys absolutely nothing.

Rodney huffs and goes back to his vital task of coaxing up the fire, and fighting down the blush that’s flushing his face.

“Just—you—” Rondey stutters, "just shut the hell up."

“Aw, Rodney,” John says. “You always say the sweetest things.”

“It’s one of my numerous charms,” Rodney says, and returns his attention to the budding flames.

-

“Do you ever get the feeling that you’re waiting for something?” Rodney asks.

“Sure,” John says, somewhat grumpily. They’ve been damp for a few hours after a rain shower and he’s been impatiently patting down his hair in hopes of it drying. He points to it.

“No, moron. I mean. Doesn’t it feel like you’re constantly on the edge, waiting for something to happen?”

“Considering we're in the middle of the apocalypse, then sure, Rodney, I think it’d be pretty stupid if I _didn’t.”_

“You’re impossible.” Rodney tugs at the straps of his bag. “I’m bringing it up because I haven’t felt this, well, this _feeling_ for quite some time.”

“We’re talking about feelings now?” John says sarcastically.

Rodney ignores him. “I think maybe it’s because we’re back on Earth. Returning here is dredging up all these old feelings that I prefer stay buried. It’s kind of like…” He snaps his fingers. “It’s like returning to high school after you’ve graduated. If it’s still standing at least, I can’t say the same about now. The school still looks and smells the same, but it feels smaller and bigger all at once and not quite right. It’s like something has shifted and you’ve been left behind—even though that’s impossible because I’m the smartest human being alive in this godforsaken galaxy. It’s more like you’re out of phase, or it’s out of phase with you. The teachers are different and with every passing year it seems that younger and younger students walk the halls, and eventually you can’t believe that you went there once and were just one kid among the horde.”

“What does this have to do with waiting for something?”

“Public education taught me the feeling of always looking forward—well, maybe it didn't teach me as much as internalized, and not in a good way. For the longest time, I couldn’t enjoy the present. I would always be two steps ahead while planning the next twenty, and it was—it was lonely. It felt like I was always waiting for a mysterious _something_ to happen, except it never did. That’s how I spent most of my education, in this endless cycle, and then there were the joys of academia and the government and the SGC. 

“I think the only thing that snapped me out of that cycle was seeing you for the first time in the control chair, and me yelling at you to show me the universe. Then there was Atlantis, and everything was present and urgent, and even though I was still thinking ahead, I was in the present, and I remember thinking to myself, _Goddamn, this is the strangest feeling._ Now that we’re on Earth again, I feel the gears physically switching in my brain and falling back into their old cycles. It feels like I’m regressing, and I don’t like that because I’m Rodney fucking McKay and I’m always on the knife’s edge of progress and innovation, but Earth is somehow turning back time and the world is returning to gray.”

“You want to go back,” John says.

“Yeah, fucking obviously.” Rodney snorts. “We’re well past that.”

John thinks to himself that maybe Rodney is slightly more self-aware than he gives himself credit for, because the truth is that while the chair and Atlantis kickstarted Rodney’s growth, Rodney’s transition from a cynical, lonely megalomaniac to a caring, passionate megalomaniac was all 100% him. Rodney—not Atlantis, not the team, not John—did all of the hard work. He thinks that Rodney’s fears are valid, but in the grand scheme of things, insignificant. Rodney’s change is irreversible. The things he’s seen and done and the people he’s met have changed him irrevocably. To return him to his previous state would be an insult to everything the current Rodney is.

“You’ve changed,” John says honestly. “I think you’ll be alright.”

-

They continue walking and their food supply dwindles as the nights become colder. The forests shift to plains and back again, and the color schemes change with them. It’s the tail end of autumn now, and the trees look like they are burning but there’s no smoke, only the whisper of wind through the branches, and the leaves crackling when trodden underfoot.

They make a game of kicking and jumping in the piles of leaves. It’s fun because they make it so. Their stomachs grumble and they don’t really want to expend more energy than they have to, but keeping up morale takes precedence. Rodney’s never Mr. Happy on the best of days, but when he drags his feet and lets the conversation waver, that means something;s wrong. John, who’s been taciturn and grumpy since the day of his birth, remains the same. He can feel himself get quieter, though. The silence festers between them.

At night, it seems that the only way Rodney can sleep now without awakening from nightmares is when he sidles up close to John and buries his face in John’s neck. When John wakes up in the middle of the night and feels Rodney’s breath ruffling the tufts of his hair, he finds that he doesn’t mind.

They’re hungry all the time now, but they’ve been walking along the bank of a river so at least they have a supply of clean water. It’s an all -consuming ache, gnawing at their insides. John can see his ribs now, poking out; Rodney says he looks like a living skeleton, all sharp angles and gaunt cheeks. Meanwhile, Rodney complains about his own empty stomach sticking to his spine, but without any bite to his diatribes. It’s more to keep up the routine than anything else.

One day, John trips over a rock and can’t get up. He thinks about just giving up, lying there forever and ever. Distantly, he hears Rodney saying, _Get up, get up, John,_ more and more urgently, but it fades into the background. 

He blinks up at the sun and wishes that he could see the stars again, one last time. Even the Earth constellations would do.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Rodney comes back, and props John’s limp body up and cradles his head, puts something in his mouth and says, "Here, eat this" _._ John tries his best, managing a few swallows that he immediately regrets. His stomach’s queasy, but the forest floor sharpens into focus, along with the texture of itchy pants on the back of his neck and Rodney’s expression.

“You idiot,” Rodney says, and John looks away, because although he’s seen Rodney angry before, Rodney’s never turned that expression on him full force. It makes his eyes burn a little, and Rodney laughs bitterly, and says, “Oh, no, don’t _cry,_ John. Just keep sacrificing yourself for _no goddamn reason—”_

“I wasn’t _—_ ” John rasps, and Rodney hands him a canteen albeit viciously, and a little of the water splashes on the front of his shirt. “Okay, maybe I was, but you don’t _understand—”_

“What do I not understand?” Rodney yells, throwing his hands up in the air. “Your martyr complex? Your self-sacrificing tendencies? I’m _not_ more fucking important than you!”

“No, listen.” John coughs, tries to sit up on his own, and Rodney places one warm hand on his chest and gently pushes him down. “Listen, please just—if one of us makes it back…” and Rodney shakes his head vehemently, one step away from clapping his hands over his ears and singing _lalala,_ “Will you just _listen!”_ John bursts out, then falls back, suddenly tired. “It has to be you. It has to be…” and he stops, because Rodney is crying.

Rodney is _crying._ “Goddamn you, don’t you dare talk like that,” he gasps, stabbing a finger at John’s chest. “Don’t you _dare,_ we’re both going to make it out of this or we’re not going to make it out at all!” and then stops, horrified, because he’s just broken an unspoken rule between them.

Because that’s always been a possibility, and the thing about possibility is that it’s not concrete. But if one of them acknowledges that it's real, then that makes it _true._

“Just—” Rodney throws up his hands, “just eat and go to sleep. We’ll deal with this in the morning.” He gets up, places John on the sleeping bag with a small pile of roots that he had obviously scavenged for, little clumps of dirt still clinging to the thin strands, and limps away.

-

The sun rises, and so does John. He works his way out of their sleeping bag while Rodney sleeps like the dead, and crawls over to where his pack lies on the ground. It’s significantly more tattered than it was at the start of their journey and the camo design is indistinguishable from the crusty dirt, smeared and long dry. 

He brushes off the flame-colored leaves that fell on it during the night and unzips it. He rummages in his pack for a little tin container, and is inordinately pleased when he doesn’t come up empty. Wrenching off the lid, he examines its contents. Relatively unbroken, that’s good. He takes out a few and starts unwrapping them, not bothering to disguise the crinkling sound. 

Rodney rouses, sitting up relatively quickly for someone who had been in a dead sleep fifteen seconds prior. “Is that what I think it is?” he asks, disbelieving.

John pops an Oreo in his mouth and crunches it. There are six in the small pack. John’s not too fond of Oreos but still misses them, which is why there are two for him and four for Rodney. He takes another one and holds it gingerly between his fingers as he tosses the packet to Rodney, who catches it with shaking hands.

“You’re drooling,” John says.

“Am not,” Rodney retorts intelligently, swallowing heavily. He eyes the Oreos with a reverent gaze. “I am merely observing the splendor of the cookie.”

“Is it a cookie or a cracker?” John muses.

“Are you joking? I hope you’re joking.” Rodney puts down the packet and massages his temples. “First of all, there are many debates surrounding the prodigal confectionary treat known as the Oreo, but ‘cookie or cracker’ has never been one of them. You can debate with relative ferocity whether the cookie or the filling is best, or what order to eat them in. Philistines believe the Oreo is best when separated and eaten in its separate components. I, an intelligent human being, am completely secure in my confidence that the Oreo is best consumed as a whole entity.”

“God is dead,” John says, disgusted. He takes his second and final Oreo apart and licks off the cream, the only correct way to consume it.

“There is no god. In addition, I am completely aware that this is supposed to be an apology gift, and yet what do I see? Two cookies for you, and four for me. In effect, this makes your apology invalid, as you are displaying the same self-sacrificial behavior that led to this situation in the first place.”

John sighs. “I’ll bite. How can I make it up to you then?”

Rodney leers at him.

“Right now?” John says, disbelieving.

“No, we both have to take showers first. I’m not touching any part of you until there isn’t a speck of dirt to be found on both of us. The river can only do so much. You reek-a, ya freak-a.”

John stares at him. Rodney happily crunches his cookie.

“What?”

“You’re unbelievable, Rodney.”

“Apology accepted, by the way.”

“Thanks,” John says sarcastically. “Did you forgive me before or after you picked the cookie crumbs off your shirt and ate them?”

Rodney licks his fingers. “Somewhere in the middle.” 

-

Their cookie escapade doesn’t solve much, but it removes the quiet awkwardness between them. John is still overcome with dizziness from hunger at random times and Rodney’s in the same situation. Their stomachs growl together in a discordant song. They forage and cook to the best of their abilities and ignore the twisting of their innards. They’re almost there, after all. 

The map stopped being helpful as soon as they were completely ensconced in the woods a while ago, but they follow the same direction relative to the sun. The rivers showed up where they were supposed to on the map, so John figures they’ll be alright. 

They have to be. It wouldn’t be right if they came all this way just to be lost in the woods. Everything has an ending, right? Even the universe is finite, as far as John knows. Rodney might have some thoughts on the matter, but John isn’t going to ask him. He doesn’t want to squat for three hours while Rodney scrawls math in the dirt with a stick like last time. John likes his equations clean, both figuratively and literally. 

Entropy dictates that the lowest energy state occurs with the most disorder. The straightest path between two points is a straight line. Does that mean that a line has more entropy than a curve? Does entropy even apply to one dimensional figures? Probably not, John figures, pun intended. 

He thinks about it so much that he does eventually ask Rodney. Cheyenne Mountain is right in front of them, and they’re about to make the final climb. They’re in the middle of emptying their packs of everything non-essential. Rodney throws a near-empty stick of deodorant aside and says, “If something or someone goes directly from point A to point B, that means they expend less energy. Something that takes a long and winding path will naturally use a greater amount.” 

“Length is determined by effort,” John retorts, “or maybe it isn’t, considering we could’ve made their journey sitting down if our car hadn’t run out of gas.”

“‘Our’ car,” Rodney says, making air quotes. “Sure.”

John fishes a pair of socks out of his bag, tentatively sniffs, and throws them aside. “A longer life doesn’t necessarily mean a life better lived, though. Not that lives have value, because all souls have value in the sense that a price can’t be attached to them—”

“Don’t try to get all philosophical on me now!” Rodney groans.

“Hear me out!” John waves his hands. “Is it better to live a life that’s ephemeral and shining, or to live gray and drab till the end of our days?” 

“Did you read that somewhere?” Rodney breaks a used and dirty toothbrush in two. “There might be a middle between the two.” He drops the pieces. “There has to be.”

Life can’t be in absolutes, because if there’s anything John’s learned from Atlantis it's that life mimics machines—or is it the other way around? Because while the theory behind the machines is perfect, they were assembled and constructed by humans, and if John’s learned one thing from humanity, it’s that it's fallible. He says so.

Rodney sneers at him. “Humans are fallible, life is fallible, and all we can hold onto when we have nothing else are the memories that we treasure, and eventually those will fade too, right?”

“Yeah, and is fire doomed to die?” John says, thoroughly getting into it. “The candle’s fate is to sputter into nothing, leaving gases and ash and a scorched wick. If human nature is as passionate as the flames, is it better to burn bright or never burn at all?” 

One of the hairbrushes is cracked, and John uses it as a microphone and pretends to be an orator on the stage of Ancient Greece. “Some fires are started by children with magnifying glasses and others are set in forests where they consume trees and land and life. If human nature is fire, is it meant to destroy? If human nature is fire, does that mean fire is alive, or that human nature was never alive in the first place?”

Rodney smacks his forehead. “Fire isn’t biological nor a living organism.” 

John waves his arms dramatically. “Yet we stare at the flames that jump and eat and reach up to the sun and moon and stars, and we wonder what they’re reaching for. If the human soul is made of fire, then that means that we are doomed to eternally consume, endlessly destroy, leaving nothing behind but small black flecks and the memory of a riot of color.” 

“The energy dissipates and fades into the system; the second law of thermodynamics proves true and the total energy of the universe remains constant,” Rodney says. “Yeah, yeah. Get back to work.”

Fire leaves behind something new in that destruction, a cleanliness and purity underneath the soot, John thinks. He fishes out the Oreo wrappers, truly feeling bad about littering. “If human nature is fire, is its destiny to destroy and rebuild itself, over and over in its cycle like a phoenix?”

“What is _with_ you and bird references?”

“If humanity is a fire and a fire is the integral, interlinking, essential component of a phoenix, does that mean humanity is connected to birds in both mind and body and soul?” John says. “Also, let’s put this trash in an empty bag.”

Rodney looks like he’s about to protest, and John says firmly, “We are not leaving your Star Trek underwear for future generations to find.”

They’re on the other side of the mountain from the SGC as much as John can tell, but just in case the SGC is reclaimed or the Earth’s recolonized or aliens inhabit or something, he doesn’t want the SGC’s legacy to be a ragged paperback, a deflated pillow, and several empty bottles of painkillers.

Several of the wrappers have blown away, and they chase after them. John calls at Rodney’s receding back: “A bird flies and flies, loops and twists and rises upwards and onwards in that gentle grace.”

“Where do you come up with this garbage?” Rodney wails, retrieving the Nilla wafers.

John runs after a stray bit of a completed Sudoku page. “If we look into the flames, we see the red and orange and yellow feathers of the birds, and see the swoops mimicked by the action of potential released and converted into something kinetic and alive-not-alive.” 

“Don’t you dare bring kinetics into your pseudo-Modernist bullshit.”

“Aw, why?” John pouts, and throws the page at Rodney.

He scans over it and says, “This is wrong.”

“Really?”

Rodney crumbles the page in disgust. “Of course not, you wannabe mathematician.”

“I do have a BA in math,” John says humbly.

“Oh, for crying out loud—” Rodney ruffles through the bags they’re going to drag up the mountain one last time and pulls out a familiar cylindrical object. “Throw away the goddamn spray can!”

“I need it.” John snatches it back. The label proclaiming the color has long since peeled off. “It’s sentimental. Speaking of sentimental—”

“Don’t, please. Enough.”

“If heat and the human soul and fire and the phoenix are connected, and the fire and heat spread everywhere while the soul and phoenix travel to all points of the compass in both body and soul, then that means birds fly in different directions.”

“What does that even _mean?”_ Rodney cries.

John’s really into it now, enough to ignore Rodney. There’s a blazing purity and honesty and a fundamental awareness in the statement, even if John said it in jest. 

They leave the camo bag bulging full of trash right there at the base of the mountain. They take a deep breath and start heading up, but all John can think about is if he closes his eyes, whether or not he’ll feel his arms curving into wings—sprouting feathers that trail sparks over everywhere he’s ever been, and every single place he’s going to go.

-

They’re standing at the top of Cheyenne Mountain. It was a long and arduous climb, and their legs shook by the end, but now they’re at the top, surveying the untouched ruins of their small world.

John finds the emergency hatch. He twists the latch, which doesn’t budge. Like _hell,_ after all they’ve been through. He elbows Rodney, hard, and Rodney joins in and pulls. Eventually, something gives way and they heave off the metal covering and drop it on the ground.

“Do you believe in lost love?” Rodney asks him. 

“What the hell does that mean?” John says. There’s a ladder on the inside of the circular tunnel, going vertically down. He shoulders the two bags with their essentials, and leaves the other empty ones containing various objects with no use to them anymore behind.

“I mean…” Rodney taps his chin, thinking. He sheds some of his own bags and takes out a flashlight, shining it in the tunnel. John enters first, and Rodney follows. Standard operating procedure: easy, familiar. “Love can take many forms. Some can be filial, romantic, platonic, etcetera. I’m wondering if you can ever return to something you used to love.”

John has a sickening feeling he knows what Rodney’s about to tell him. “Say it.”

“I don’t love Earth anymore,” Rodney says bluntly, and his voice echoes inside the cavity as they descend. “I used to. I loved its forests and oceans and canyons and single moon with all my heart. I loved it just as much as I love clean calculus and straight, inexorable physics. Then…”

“We found Atlantis.”

“Yes. And then, against all odds, I fell in love again.” There’s quiet. They reach the bottom—the room’s familiar from countless evac procedures and they follow the route to the Gateroom. 

The base is untouched except for a single note, pasted on a sheet of computer paper that repeats itself over and over: _Gone fishing._

“O’Neill set new evac procedures before he left?”

“Seems so.” They don’t know the SGC procedures and codes, as they’re closely guarded secrets even to Atlantis personnel in case of a breach, so the SGC could have gone anywhere from their alpha or beta sites to Atlantis itself. Nonetheless, it seems fitting: an active wormhole does have a water-like quality to it.

“You fell in love with Atlantis?” John prompts.

“Yes.” Rodney startles and tears his eyes away from a sign. “I loved her sleek walls, her mathematical structures and her crystalline technology. I liked the way she eventually responded to me. I instantly fell in love with the way she reacted to you—lighting up and warming the air.” 

Rodney’s boots squeak on the floor as they turn a corner. “And even though the majority of my scientists are incompentent morons and the military is loud and disruptive and there's always infighting and a million urgent problems to be fixed at any given time… Even though some days I consider jumping off a balcony—I look around at the world we’ve discovered, the people we’ve met, and the city we call home. And I realize that, for the first time in my life, my _I_ has become a _we.”_

John remembers the puddlejumpers coming to life under his hands for the first time, the city greeting him in an inexplicably tender burst of familiarity, the feeling of finally coming home for the very first time. “Earth was never home,” he says regretfully.

“Exactly.” Rodney pauses. They descend several flights of stairs before he speaks again. “It was a clever facsimile; a placeholder, perhaps. I thought I would love it eternally, but the truth is that Earth was transient, liminal, a stepping stone. I thought it was the beginning and end because I’d never been exposed to anything else.”

“Do you think we’ll ever love Earth again?” John asks. He knows his answer. It’s easy to admit to himself, in the dark. 

“No,” Rodney says without hesitation. “We’ve taken what we needed from this place and bled it dry. We were always out of place here, a beat out of step, but we made do. Earth was a cocoon for us, but Atlantis was our catalyst for metamorphosis.” 

They reach the Gateroom. The blast doors are open, and Rodney touches the edge of one as they walk inside unhindered. “We had some good times here, and some bad times. But sometimes, you outgrow people and places. You change as a person, and when you try to return to something you love, you discover that it can’t quite fit the niche where it used to reside.” 

The Stargate looms in the back, unlit and silent. John drags the heavy power sources out of their bags as well as the sides of the room, some kind of naquadah generators or something. They make energy, and that’s all he needs to know. He wonders if more energy travels along the equivalent of veins in the battery if he wills it so. If it’ll spark brighter if John looks at it. 

John says, “If the fire alights and doesn’t make a mark on the world around it, did it ever really burn?”

Rodney snorts as he hooks up the power sources to the Stargate, and sprints up to the control deck where he starts typing and flipping switches. “Of course it did. The chemical reaction has byproducts. We’re not doing this philosophical shit again.” He enters the main dialing sequence, and there’s just enough power for the trip home. John knew there would be—after all they've been through it’s intrinsic in the natural order of things, inevitable. He says this to Rodney just to watch his reaction.

Rodney's mouth twists unhappily while the Stargate begins to dial, and ignores that. “It makes me _sad_ though, because this was where I was born, where I learned to ride a bike and do multi-variable algebra and swim in the ocean, and I didn’t have many friends but I cherished the ones I had. But it doesn’t hurt to leave anymore, not as much as the first time, which, come to think of it, wasn’t very much at all.”

John reshuffles the bags and thumbs the straps and says, “When I was a pilot, all places on Earth felt the same to me. They didn’t look similar, but after seeing so much I got used to the feeling of being small. When I flew in Atlantis and Pegasus, I didn't feel small anymore. I felt like I was coming into my inheritance, more than I ever felt towards my father and Dave’s business.” The Stargate flares to life, and he stares into the blue that resembles the ocean but isn’t. “This is real.”

Rodney leaves the controls and rejoins John in front of the active Stargate. John continues: “It felt like I was in a perpetual state of sleeping on Earth. Everything was blurry and faded, and I just felt so _tired_ all the time. It felt like I was waiting for something all my life, and I didn’t even know what it was, but I’d given up hope of ever finding it. But then I went through the Stargate and stepped into Atlantis for the first time, and I looked around at her blue-tinted columns and massive Gateroom and the world burst into color. And it was beautiful, and even though everything immediately went to shit, those five minutes of wonder were the most potent thing I’ve ever felt, like I was finally awake and where I was meant to be.”

“This is why Earth feels so out of place to us,” Rodney says. They walk forward until they’re standing at the foot of the ramp. “We’ve become natives. Earth isn’t our home anymore.”

“Maybe it never was.”

“True. But we loved it just the same.”

They look around at the Gateroom, taking in the darkness of the abandoned rooms and controls behind them and the circular ripples ahead. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Did you actually flip a coin to choose to come to Atlantis?”

John grins at him. Not just a smile or a smirk, but a full-on grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know the answer to that question.”

“It’s one of the Seven Great Mysteries of John Sheppard,” Rodney says.

John thinks: _I figure we both know the answer._ "Hang on a sec," he says. He ruffles through his bag and takes out a can of white spray paint. It seems he’s found a use for it. 

"Thirty-eight minutes, John," Rodney says, tapping his watch and shaking his head. 

On the wall opposite the Stargate, John takes the can and draws a white dove, but in his mind, it’s a phoenix that burns white-hot and bright. The bird means hope, and where there is hope, there is life; where there is life, there is vital energy. Circular and cyclical, just like the Stargate next to him.

John looks back once and once only, and Rodney takes his hand. They step through the Stargate, and the wormhole closes behind them with a sound nothing like the flutter of wings. Together they make the journey home, trailing sparks of bright fire behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very last fic for SGA. I've moved on to another fandom, so if you're interested in BNHA, you're in luck. I finished my only SGA wip and marked my SGA Art series as complete, so that should tie up any loose strings. This fandom was amazing and being a participant truly was a formative experience. So long and thanks for all the fish.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for MermaidMayonnaise's Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395718) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific)




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